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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

3 Ingredient Chokecherry Jelly/syrup

Let me let you in on a little secret....for mouth watering chokecherry jelly or syrup you do NOT have to spend countless hours over a hot stove, days preparing, you don't have to have your grandma's recipe, you can make it with very few ingredients & you don't have to be Suzy homemaker! I know it is great news! Last Christmas for a few gifts I decided to try my hand at making some homemade jellies for the first time ever, I know how cruel of me.....experimenting on family & friends for gifts...but really what better time? ;) Back then I had made the usual's - strawberry, blackberry, & peach all turned out great. I gave them with a loaf of homemade bread, who can resist that right?
One morning I was outside in our yard and seen the abundance of chokecherries that were on our trees & then it hit me - why not make chokecherry jelly? I mean it is never too early to start thinking about Christmas gifts, or back to school teacher gifts, or let me brighten your day gifts. And I wasn't going to see the chokecherries just go to waste.

Picking & making great chokecherry jelly
So I gathered up the kiddos and thought I would let them help me in this process. We collected 2 big bowls full of chokecherries, just so I could try it out at first to make sure it would turn out ok.

Then we made sure each stem was off of each individual chokecherry & picked through them to get the "bad" ones out (this is very time consuming, but you need to do it.) After that step it's easy breezy.

Put all the cleaned & ripe chokecherries into a pot & barely cover them with water. Let the pot come to a boil & boil until the berries are soft, about 10-15 minutes. Mash the chokecherries still in the pot once soft ( I just used my potato smasher). Once you have them all smashed pour the whole pot through your strainer (put a bowl under your strainer to catch the "jelly")& the strainer should catch all the seeds and most of the pulp.

Pour the bowl of jelly into your pot once again boil & add sugar. Continue to boil for 15 minutes. Now just put the jelly into your desired glass containers & let people enjoy.

Ingredients:
Chokecherries
Water
Sugar (use 1 cup less of sugar than you have chokecherry juice)

Ex: I ended up with 8cups of chokecherry juice, so I used 7cups of sugar.

Obviously I will be sprucing up the tops of the jars for sure - whether I spray paint the lids or cover them in fabric & ribbon is yet to be decided. But add a cute little label & they are ready to hand out ;)